THE CONGRESS: Screeching Pause

Louisiana's Dixiecrat Congressman F.
Edward Hebert put it in language any politician could understand.
"So the proposition is very clear," he said on the House
floor "Your vote is for sale for a job or jobs." It was a
blunt denunciation of the price tag Harry Truman had put on political
patronage (see above).

The House machinery, which had been turning out bills like sausages, had
come to a screeching pause. Its legislative teeth had ground into a
major Harry Truman campaign promise: to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. On
the floor, Truman...